An ‘Outsider’ says: ‘Richard Smith needs to be fired.’ Well yeah.

The folks from Football Outsiders that put together the yearly Pro Football Prospectus use staffers and volunteer game charters to determine team tendencies. For example, in this year’s Prospectus, they noted that the Texans blitzed a ton in 2006 and hardly at all in 2007.

Recently, Football Outsiders had their game charters do a write up of various teams they have been tracking. It’s a great read and I suggest you check it out (The Texans one looks like it was written before the Baltimore game).

I don’t agree with every single point in it, but I do agree with the overall view of the defense. The Texans need more playmakers in just about every position on the defense but that even with those player deficits, Richard Smith need to be shown the door.

Here’s an excerpt but really you should check it out:

Defensive coordinator Richard Smith needs to be fired. Now. He has patently refused to let his rookies and young players like Bennett and Antuan Molden see the field even despite the failings of everyone in front of them. Is there any reason left to not see how the rookies have done? Why is Demarcus Faggins still on the roster?

Second complaint: Smith almost never blitzes. We have a column where we are supposed to mark rushers on pass plays. Before I start charting my half, I usually just mark down “4” on every pass play the Texans run, knowing that I will maybe change two or three of them at the most. And when he does send a blitz, it’s often a terribly designed blitz. One play against the Lions sent Dunta Robinson from the inside on a corner blitz. This was his second game back from his injury. By the time Dunta was even at the line of scrimmage, Dan Orlovsky had thrown the ball. Mario Williams is a great start to a pass rush, and maybe the personnel in place isn’t optimal for blitzing, but if the Texans defense is so bad, shouldn’t they be trying to force more big plays? Don’t they need those turnovers? I just don’t see how any rational person could keep doing what he’s doing.

Anyway, I’d like you to read the article and give me your thoughts. As I said, it is not the be all and end all, but I think the comments about the defense in particular are pretty spot on.

The other day on the Friday afternoon radio show I’ve been a guest on 1560 The Game, I was asked what my shopping list was for the Texans defense. I hope to get the podcast of this stuff soonishly, but here’s the summary of my answer:

1. You need to know who the defensive coordinator is. Different DCs value players differently. A player who might be a good fit in one defense may be a poor fit in another.

2. It’s not just a question of one position. The Texans have needs throughout the defense, and this is not a surprise to the team nor anyone who was closely watching the team. They are thin on the line, at linebacker, safety and defensive backs. Everything. Sometimes people confuse having a lot of guys at a position as having depth. Often when you have a ton of guys competing for a spot, you have nobody. They have been trying to make do at a lot of spots. Really, you could take best player available on defense, and fill a need.

3. The defensive players are hard to evaluate due to scheme, playing out of position due to need, and playing time. When Mike Sherman came to the Texans in 2006, he said that they had to pretty much throw out the 2005 offensive tape because it was worthless.

You can’t say that the tape on the Texans defense is completely worthless, but it is hard to evaluate the players some times given what they are asked to do. Big cushions and few blitzes tell you less about the players and more about your scheme stinks.

4. The Texans have one of the youngest defenses in the league except in those few spots where they are very old. It’s hard to develop quality players when you don’t have veteran quality players to help out. The Texans are going to focus a lot on defense in the draft which they need to, but in the short term that doesn’t help with the football IQ of the defense.

Apologies some about the timing of this after Cleveland only scored 6 points last Sunday. I thought you would want to read this link, and besides, just because your team wins, doesn’t mean that the problems aren’t still there. The Texans did play more aggressively, but also there was some significant gooning on Cleveland’s part that assisted.

One of the most apt descriptions in the game charters discussion concerned the Texans safety play, which has been a problem for the team since the beginning:

[T]he Texans losing both safeties is sort of like when the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail lost both of his legs; I guess theoretically it weakened them, but overall it was pretty redundant. Will Demps and Eugene Wilson are the Texans’ best pair of safeties, but neither of them are much in deep coverage, and when your best safeties coming over in back-to-back years as training camp free agents, that’s a pretty damning indictment of your in-house options. Brandon Harrison showed absolutely no reason to play him ever again. Nick Ferguson is the same all-run, no-pass safety he has always been, only now he’s old. C.C. Brown is still dreadful, and losing him was a blessing in disguise.

I include this excerpt because 1. the safety play truly is grim; 2. it gives me an excuse to put a Monty Python Black Knight YouTube here.

I hadn’t seen that in a while but it always makes me laugh even if it is now associated in my head with the Texans safety play.